Anya’s grandmother was understandably worried. Anya hadn’t planned to tell her grandma she had chugged some shack juice, but Lily told on her almost immediately. Which was fair since they had gone to the hospital. Anya was still bummed.

Anya looked out at the rainy scene outside the car. Somehow, she felt as if her life had flipped in just one day. She was aware it made almost no sense, but she couldn’t help but to feel something different as she watched her grandmother talk with one of Lily’s and Sam’s mothers. Being very aware of the rain and the air around her for a few moments more, Anya failed to notice her grandmother had come back before the car was moving.

“Anya?” her grandmother continued looking at the road, but her tone of voice made it seem like she was looking right into Anya’s soul.

“Grandma.” Anya replied, completely serious.

“Why would you drink a strange thing you found in an abandoned house?”

“It was in a box with my name on it!” Anya defended herself. Her grandmother sighed. “But that’s a valid reason! Why would they put my name on the box if they didn’t want me to get what was in it?”

“Sweetheart, you aren’t the only person named Anya in the world,” her grandma tried to reason.

“Yes yes I thought that too! But my head got weird and it felt right to grab the things in it and I really wanted to drink the glitter.” Anya got a quick look from her grandma of immense disappointment.

“Anya you’re going to make me bankrupt,” she said, but there was a fondness in her voice that signalled to Anya that this situation was fixed.

Anya turned her attention to the suburban houses they were passing, which were soon replaced by the apartment complexes she had grown up seeing. People were moving about, going home from work and school or whatever they had been doing.

Anya let her brain turn off for a moment and enjoyed the silence.

---

Half an hour later, the pair slowly made their way up the stairs to the third floor of their apartment complex. Anya made sure to walk behind her grandma in case she was to trip or lose her balance. Anya and her cousin, Zeter, relied on her and they couldn’t have her falling down the stairs.

That would be a sad way to die, Anya thought as her grandma opened the door to their apartment.

“Do you need my help with anything?” Anya asked.

Her grandmother shook her head and took Anya’s jacket to properly put it up on the coat hangers located by the door. Loud music boomed from the room closest to the entrance, meaning Zeter was most likely in there painting. Anya watched her grandma disappear into the hallway, probably to go to the kitchen to start dinner. Deciding that there was really nothing to do, Anya went into her bedroom that was next to her cousin’s.

There wasn’t much to the small square room Anya called her own. Dark blue paint and glow in the dark stars covered the walls, with the occasional band poster or drawing here and there. Her small desk was situated under a simple black loft bed and filled with papers and books. The wall behind it held a cork board, covered with tickets and cards from various events. Anya placed her backpack on her desk chair, moving to the other side of the room where her dresser was located.

The dresser was a simple white dresser from Ikea, nothing special, but on top of it was Anya’s pride and joy: the record player she had found when clearing out one of the abandoned attic spaces. She still remembered how she had begged Zeter to paint it, which he eventually had. And he had done a damn good job. The multicoloured surface was painted in a way that looked like a colourful oil spill. Anya had asked her friends to sign it, meaning it also held the names of all of the people important to her. It was easily the best thing she owned.

Picking out one of her records, she put it in the player and laid down on the plush carpet to enjoy the first notes of “Jumpsuit” to bring her back into her daydreams.

---

She was brought back to reality by knocking on her door. Anya slowly got up from the floor, noting that the record was about halfway to finished before moving to open the door.

Behind it stood Zeter, in all his five foot glory, his mint green hair not having seen a brush in at least a week. Anya immediately went to tousle it, only to get a freckled hand swatting her away.

“Stop that, I’m not a child.” Zeter crossed his arms.

“You’re barely 13, that counts. Did you need something?” Anya asked, amused.

“Grandma asked us to go to the store to get Friday snacks," he answered, rubbing his very freckled face. Anya nodded seriously, running back into her room to shut off the music before joining Zeter.

“Did she say what she wanted us to get?”

“Nope, you know the drill, ‘get what you want it’s Friday’”, Zeter answered, adding air quotes for emphasis or just to be more sarcastic.

“We’re getting liquorice then,” Anya smirked.

“We’re absolutely not.” Zeter was already at the door, waiting for his cousin to join him.

Fiddling with the buttons on her jacket longer than a high schooler maybe should have, Anya joined her cousin to race through the door.

---

The closest store to Anya’s home was a small privately owned market. Half of the time it didn’t have anything useful, and the other half you didn’t need those things. But one thing it always had plenty of were snacks.

There was an entire shelf of Pocky, which Zeter immediately started looking through. Anya went to the other end of the snack section to find the liquorice, which she placed in their basket while holding eye contact with Zeter. He immediately flipped her off, getting a gasp and some whispers from a group of elderly people nearby.

“Zeter I’m going to charge you with homicide for giving an elderly lady a heart attack.”

“I’m going to charge you with felony for liking liquorice,” Zeter retorted, placing the three boxes of Pocky he had selected in the basket. Grabbing some chips, they made their way to the register.

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t a criminal offense, whereas murder definitely is.” Anya continued with very little care for how the other people in the queue were going to react.

“I mean it should be.”

“So should dyeing your hair at the age of 12!”

“It’s not like I bleached it! And you don’t get to judge me you played with an axe and hit your leg when you were five!” Zeter halfway yelled, immediately shutting up for a while after as he realised that the register worker was looking at him and Anya expecting them to just get on with buying things. Anya only greeted them with a “hey”.

He remained quiet until the two of them were outside the store.

“Now I can charge you with public humiliation!” Anya triumphantly yelled and started running back home.

“Hey! No you can’t!” Zeter followed.

---

The Friday tradition was simple: eat dinner, get snacks and watch Netflix cuddled up on the couch until everyone was too tired to stay awake. This Friday was no different. By the time the TV was playing the second season of Merlin, only Anya and Zeter were awake. It was around 1 am and both of them were nearly asleep, but they were both stubbornly willing themselves to stay awake to analyse the inherent gayness of Colin Morgan’s Merlin. Anya was absentmindedly eating the last few pieces of liquorice, not even really watching the show and more so looking at the light bouncing off the ceiling lamp, glittering over the walls.

Looking to her side, Anya saw that Zeter was softly snoring, head lolled to his side. Giggling silently, Anya stretched, hearing her back pop a few times as it got used to being a normal spine again. She got up, careful not to make too much noise. She peeled off the blanket covering her cousin, lifting him up bridal style. Zeter murmured something in his sleep, trying to turn to his side as Anya was holding him. Anya simply turned him back so she could pick up the now discarded blanket. Zeter would kill her if he woke up without a blanket, and she didn’t quite feel like dying right now.

Pushing the door to Zeter’s room open with her leg she walked around the mess on the floor, making her way to his bed. Laying her cousin down and tucking him in gently, Anya felt her eyes grow heavy with sleep.

Deciding that walking to her own bed would take too much effort in this moment, she crawled into the bed next to her cousin, slowly falling asleep.